Abstract:

Death-related education should become an integral part of upbringing and education, even at primary schools. Attention should be focused in particular on understanding death and its meaning. Therefore, school teaching represents an adequate and highly effective implementation tool of systematic death education. The topic of death can be initiated at school by a film or reading activity. Currently, there are extensive artistic texts usable for this purpose. Nevertheless, it is the teacher's art to select an appropriate artistic text for the interpretation to support death education. Although death is a part of our lives and should be openly discussed, it is still to some extent a taboo topic in the Czech schools. Teachers often express concerns about pupils' reactions. Concurrently, they doubt and warn about the lack of methodology for using such texts in teaching. The article reflects on the teachers' approach to death-related education in the Czech schools. It draws attention to the possibilities of working with available literary texts which reflect the topic of death and are suitable for usage in literary education classes at primary schools.

Keywords:

Death education, didactics, literary education, literature for children and youth.